Women of the Working Class

<p class=ql-align-center><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>The female protagonists featured in these eighteen short stories come from diverse locations and historical milieus but they have their working-class backgrounds in common. They want more than society offers and some will fight for it.</span></p><p class=ql-align-center><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Bullied by her fellow workers at the jute factory and abused by her stepfather at home ELLEN is a talented writer with a way with words. She dreams of becoming rich and famous and leaving her miserable existence behind.</span></p><p class=ql-align-center><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>ANNIE works at the cotton mill. After an exhausting ten-hour shift she reluctantly joins her friend for a meeting in the canteen where Christabel Pankhurst gives a talk about women's equality and the Suffragettes.</span></p><p class=ql-align-center><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>When her husband strikes with the miners ANGIE joins the Women Against Pit Closures Movement. Things will never be the same.</span></p><p class=ql-align-center><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>In the last story the narrator retraces a childhood walk home from school-past familiar landmarks: castle ruins and an old framework knitter's cottage. Personal memories mingle with radical history.</span></p><p class=ql-align-center><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>From the jute mills of Dundee to the factories of London's East End to the coastline of Cornwall in this collection the author re-imagines the lives of these incredible working-class protagonists and examines the changing position of women over the last century.</span></p><p><br></p>